


Jin Against Eternity

by Clavain



Category: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, Grief, I love her really though, Identity Issues, M/M, Regret, Spoilers, Suicidal Thoughts, Torna: The Golden Country DLC, bereavement, jin as a character motivated by love, lowkey mythra bashing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 00:00:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17171960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clavain/pseuds/Clavain
Summary: “The Architect left no place in his design for us. We were never meant to survive.”Character study of Jin.





	Jin Against Eternity

Jin lives through Lora; holds her closer to his heart when she’s dead than he ever had when she was alive. He makes her into a stone and drowns himself with her. He makes himself into a stone and drowns the world with it.

Haze slips through the gaps and he struggles to forget her. That’s what they call the study of the past: memory against forgetting. And time after time, he forgets which side he’s on. Which side he wants to be on. He pursues universal oblivion while refusing its mercies for himself, hypocrite that he is. It’s how he was designed – a creature of moment, existing solely in relation to another. Memory was denied to his kind. He’s just a tool, once for Lora, now for Malos.

And of course, Malos doesn’t care about that. Malos doesn’t believe in it. And that’s why he’s so easy to seek comfort in. Finally, someone worse than Jin himself. Finally, someone whose mere presence doesn’t immolate him in guilt.

“Peace.” Malos says, lying voice thick with malice and venom and promise.

And Jin, lovesick and aching, falls for it again and again.

 

He’s born into violence and a child’s fear – a fear so bright and colourful that it has no bearing on reality. His first act of existence is to cut off someone’s arm, and although he never regrets it he does sometimes wonder if it was an omen.

“From now on, I’ll protect you. I’ll be with you, always.” His first sentiment is a lie. He discovers it’s falseness slowly, painfully, like inching under icy water one toe at a time. Small failures stack up and he thinks that he’ll make them up but she’s dead before he gets the chance.

It's the happiest time of his life, being young together. They don't even fight, she doesn't even treat him like a blade. For years they play and eat and Jin works tirelessly to provide for Lora. It's a satisfying duty to put food in a child's mouth. Every moment back then is a treasure, something to ward against the future darkness like a charm.

Baking bread, learning to cook, learning to sew - it's all so human and simple and it makes him never want to fight. He understands life then, in those early years. It's not about blood. Jin resonated with a child - he's never been about war. Peacetime suits him far better. In another life, he was a farmer. He relates better to vegetables than people.

They come so close to peace each time, until his identity is discovered and the Paragon of Torna and his driver have to take to the road yet again.

He looks at her face and knows that he’d do anything for her. And it’s because she shaped him but it’s so strong that it’s beyond that, that is barely matters at all that there’s a form of mind control going on here. Blades are the tools of humans, he sees and scorns others for their devotion, but he never questions the reflection of it in himself.

How can he describe it, aging with her? He may be born into his completed body, but his mind has so much growing to do. She shapes him. Runs her hands over his contours and hollows his clavicles. She builds him, using herself as scaffolding, as everything loadbearing. She makes him unable to exist outside her without trying, because that’s what drivers do – that’s the role they’ve been cast. It’s what he has the Architect to thank for, decades later, alone underground with her heart in his chest.

 

There’s someone who looked like him but wasn’t. Paragon of Torna. Azurda knew the stranger who wore Jin’s body. Ornelia’s former blade from the Territorial Defence Corps. Who used to live in a house on the outskirts. Who seemed to think that “unsullied by her death, I will return to my core” was an acceptable state of affairs.

Lora thinks he has lost something. Looks on him like he’s less, like everything he does means less because it’s been done before. Expresses an interest in Ornelia’s former blade from the Territorial Defence Corps, as though that person is comparable to Jin. It makes him very uncomfortable, to have lived already and to be unaware of it. The entire episode reeks of jamais-vu.

The idea of rebirth fills him with immediate disgust. The human alternative – of having a grave, of dying when your mind does – seems vastly preferential. In this, like so many things, the Architect has left him no choice. Sometimes he wonders if there's any point in holding opinions (by the time he realizes that he's powerful enough to make it matter, it's too late).

 

Jin doesn’t like Mythra from the moment he lays eyes on her. He's not surprised when, later, she creates another personality to bear her burdens. She was always so immature, and so flippant about death. Like she was separate, above them all. Maybe Pyra is different, but it's too late by then.

He scowls at her when she's not looking. Addam doesn’t get acknowledgement – he’s failed so utterly to resonate meaningfully with Mythra and to bring out the best in her. Jin blames him completely for the Aegis's dispassion. Instead, the blade reminds himself that he's doing this for Lora. For Lora and Haze and Mikhail, a boy who he'd resented at first but who’d quickly grown on him.

He doesn’t like Minoth either – he reeks of Amalthus, a name which fills him with clairvoyant dread, and the person responsible for Malos. Amalthus failed Malos worse than Addam failed Mythra.

For a while, he feels like a hero. They meet Emperor Hugo and Brighid and Aegeon. For the first time, he's living up to his name, fighting on the world stage for the common good. He's not as strong as he'll become yet, but he's strong enough to protect Lora. He likes Brighid. She burns and doesn’t tolerate Mythra's arrogance.

There's always a shadow hanging over the group – Jin knows it's only a matter of time until they go their separate ways. Hugo has a nation to rule, Addam’s the driver of the Aegis, the battlefield's no place for a child. But he believes – really believes – that they'll all be okay. That Mythra will do the bare minimum and save them all, that they’ll meet up in a few years to exchange stories.

Instead, Mythra sinks continents and barely banishes Malos. She almost kills her own driver; Addam's life is only spared by Hugo's sacrifice. True Brighid and Aegeon are gone forever too. And Torna, his homeland? Sunk beneath the cloud sea.

Addam departs a broken man. Off into exile, with Mythra hidden behind another face sealed away forever. The child is dead, Mikhail will never be the same. Minoth goes his own way, too. He ends up writing plays, as though reenacting tragedy could change it. Jin is bewildered in his grief. He's never really lost anyone before – he's not a human, he hasn't slowly lost first his grandparents then his parents in degrees. This is his first loss.

He doesn't know how to cope with it. There's no graves, no Torna. Just the cloud sea.

_ At least I still have Lora _ , he tells himself.

 

“I don’t wish for forever – all I want is my life with her; and that’s plenty.” Those words stay with him. He desperately wants them to be true. They're almost true - there's just one thing he forgets. Before anything else, Jin wants to please Lora. To do what she wants. There's the rub.

The cave. He sees it hundreds of times – in dreams, in flashbacks, in wishful imaginings. It never leaves him.

She knows she's dying. He knows she's dying. It's too soon – they haven't planned for this. Thought they'd have decades left together to sort it out.

“Don’t worry.” She tells him. They're crying, together.

He doesn’t know what to say, so he says nothing. Either way, he'd regret it for the rest of his life. There's nothing he could say to make this better, nothing to heal her fatal wound. It's ending.

She knows he's going to die within the hour. For their fates to be tied like this... Jin sees the Architect anew. A cruel God.

“For us humans, being forgotten is a much worse fate than death.” Why is she telling him this? He can't remember her. It's an impossible implied request. Maybe if they'd had time to plan, to write it all down... But not now. It's too late. Addam's gone, and Lora's shot at being recognized went with him.

“We struggle… so hard… When you awaken… to you it will be like I never even existed. Jin… the thought of you forgetting me…” He wants to scream at her that he doesn't want to forget, of course he doesn't want to but this is how he was made. There's no choice- 

Unless-

“It’s like my heart is being ripped out.” She continues, soft cheeks wet with tears. Jin remembers the page in the journal. The ritual, the abhorrent ceremony to join blade and driver forever. If she really wants him to remember her-

“I’m so sorry to do this to you.”

He asks her.

She nods.

He digs his fingers into her chest. She screams, then whimpers like a dying animal. He clenches his fingers. Opens his mouth:

 

Just like that, in a number of weeks, they're all dead. Jin doesn't seek out Addam, doesn't think he could stop himself from killing him if they met face-to-face. The idea of acquainting himself with the new Brighid and Aegeon fills him with cold terror, and he can't find Mikhail no matter where he looks.

So, lost as he is, Jin tracks down Minoth.

“Where’s Lora?” He asks, innocently.

Jin draws his sword before he can think, rushes towards the other flesh eater. Flesh eater. That’s what he is now. Minoth blocks his sword with one of his daggers and regards the red crystal set in Jin's forehead.

“Amalthus?” Minoth asks.

Jin nods. He can’t find any words. With incredible speed, he pulls his sword away and rushes back. He's considering attacking again.

“I didn't know.” Minoth looks sad. Jin believes him, but it's not enough. If he stays here, he'll kill him just because he can see Amalthus in him and no matter how strong Jin is, he couldn't reach the real thing. Killing Minoth would be a compromise.

He walks away, ignoring Minoth's imploring words.  It's too late. Lora's dead, or she's reduced to a part of him which is almost worse. She wouldn't want him to kill anyone.

His grief was too great to be shared, anyway. He will endure it alone.

 

Jin tells himself that it’s okay, that he's not alone. Lora’s heart is beating painfully in his chest: a reminder that his life is no longer his own. He just has to remember that she's here. She never left.

But when he turns around and she's not there, he finds himself going through the process all over again. He’s paralysed by the idea that she’s gone. It almost feels like if he stays completely still, if he doesn't move at all, then maybe she'll come back. But she doesn't.

It takes him two decades to begin to process the grief surrounding Lora’s murder. Hours looking at his reflection in troubled waters, not recognising the furious ruby of his core crystal. Days turning around, expecting her to be there. Weeks of cooking for two, followed by weeks of not cooking or eating at all. 

From the moment she’s gone he doesn’t belong. Shouldn’t be here. And doesn’t his body know it, doesn’t his mind know it, isn’t it written into every line of fabric he wears, isn’t it inscribed on the back of his eyelids? You shouldn’t be here. You should have fallen with her. Blades aren’t meant to be without drivers.

Isn’t this what you wanted, what she wanted? He asks himself, hand over her heart. You read the instructions. You performed the ritual. You did this. Why? It’s not because he wanted his existence to continue. It takes him years to find out why. For now, he says it’s to carry her memory. He doesn’t know what to do with it. 

He is not only without driver – he is without country too. One of thousands displaced by Mythra's recklessness. Homeless and without nation. He cannot visit Lora's mother's grave, he cannot return to her village or the places they once walked together. It's all gone.

Jin moves to Mor Ardain and wonders if these massive titans are cognizant. Was Torna aware of the people who lived on her back, or of the children incubating inside of her? Did she die screaming, or in a state of blissful peace?

Ether is supposed to circulate. Jin watches blades and titans, trying to find a trace of his homeland in any of them. But it is truly gone. If any of its ether has resurfaced, it's been in a completely unrecognisable form. More likely still, it's remaining in the cloud sea, brewing.

 

When Malos comes with an offer to end it all, Jin won’t let himself go that easily. He still remembers who fought whom, still remembers whose destruction killed everyone he had ever cared about. The only reason he doesn’t initiate combat straight off if a stupid, naïve hope that Malos has come to put him out of his misery. He braces himself, but it’s not enough to protect against the pity and disgust on Malos’s face as he lays out his plan.

“So, think of it like revenge.” Malos finishes, hands in pockets. “I’d like to get back at our Father for what he’s dealt us. We could do it together. A partnership.”

“ _ He _ didn’t do this.” Jin says, hands empty, palms facing the sky. “I did this.”  _ I took her heart, not the Architect. He’d have me dead, dead and forgotten and forgetting. _

“He didn’t stop it.” Malos argues. “He allowed for it. It’s negligence at best.”

“It’s too easy.” Jin’s voice is soft and strong. “It’s too easy to just say it was all the Architect. I… we don’t deserve that kind of absolution. It’s a coward’s solution.” Jin curls his hands into fists and bares his teeth. “It was us. We did it.”  _ I killed her. _

Malos waves his hand dismissively. “You didn’t kill Lora, old friend. I know what I did and I know what Mythra did and I know what the Architect did, which was set all this shit up. He made us a people without memory. Without oral tradition or home, a people reliant on others for our very existence – painfully influenceable and all too easy to crush. We owe it to them.”

“What, exactly do we owe them?” Jin turns his head to look Malos in the eyes.

“Peace.” He replies easily.

_ Peace? _ Something in him softens.  _ Give them… peace. _

 

Slowly, they build their family of flesh and bladeeaters together.

And he has Mikhail. Jin can’t articulate how that makes him feel. Mikhail shouldn’t be alive. Shouldn’t have survived. Jin feels a burning desire to correct that – to take him out of the world. To restore order. But he looks at his hands and his katana and knows that he can’t trust himself to make that decision.

Instead, he remembers the child he'd known with Lora and holds onto that memory desperately, trying to impose it onto reality. To think of Mikhail as Mik, as his friend, as a child. It doesn't work.

 

 _Peace._ Jin sits in the forest clearing cross-legged. _Coup-de-grace._ _Murder._ He picks in idea up and tries in on, uncertain. It doesn't fit. He's not sure he can do this. It's not what Lora would have wanted. 

He thinks about slow death from a stomach wound. About the people he's seen on the battlefield who go out painfully and at length. He thinks about cutting off limbs to prevent the spread of infection. Of sepsis and gangrene. He thinks of children unable to be fed during famine, of how sometimes mothers smother them to spare them slow death by starvation.

_ Mercy _ . It has a finality, a kindness to it. Jin sighs, shakes his head. He's not there yet.

 

Malos is like a child, Jin learns. He is hurt so he hurts others. It's very primeval. The more Jin watches him the more he understands Amalthus. Grief, pride, and when you go deeper, more grief, layers of it, like bricks and cement and soil. A fragile, loving wrath – an immovable understanding of death as merciful, and an entitlement that he should deliver it because he is the Aegis.

But when he thinks about Malos before, Malos and his hundreds of artifices, Jin remembers how far he’s come. Once - he'd been full of fire and glory and boundless, directionless hatred. Now he's made something of himself. Narrowed it down, compartmentalized away, removed himself as far from Amalthus as he could. Whatever Malos is, it's a start.

They rebuild him, together. Across the decades. Jin tells him what’s him and what's Amalthus, tells him what to keep and what to bury. Malos looks at him, wide-eyed and hopeful, and asks what he should do. Jin closes his eyes and holds his hand. Guides him. This is how to be, on this world, he says.

And they share sunsets. And they share frailty, both chronically injured and barely holding together. Jin looks at Malos and sees all of creation looking back. It makes him feel powerful. It makes think about mercy.

Malos is strong, almost indestructible. He is safe to love because he will not die. Jin loves him instead of another because he cannot bear to lose anyone else.

 

“Should we be encouraging him?” Jin asks Mikhail one night, after Malos has left.

“Oh, Jin.” Mikhail laughs. Jin recoils, stung. He'd meant the question. “Jin who hates fighting. You don't belong here. Go home “

“No, I belong here, I do... It's just...” He looks down, unable to defend himself.

“The Architect killed Lora. He took our youth. What would you gave us do?”

Jin remains silent. He has no answer.

“I won't do nothing.” Mikhail bares his teeth, eyes urgent and deadly. “I look at Malos and I see someone with a dream, a chance at revenge. I won't deny him his birthright.”

“Malos killed Milton.” The retort bursts out on impulse. He regrets it the second it leaves his mouth.

“No. Mythra killed Milton.” There's something cold about Mikhail. It reminds Jin of the quiet, dissociative child who'd had more self-possession than most adults. Mik's always been detached.

Jin can’t bring himself to apologize, or to argue. He thinks Mik might be right. They stare past each other in silence for the rest of the evening. Deep inside himself, Jin feels something start to shift.

 

Akhos and Patroka remind Jin that he has a people, and that his people are suffering at the Praetor's hand. He can’t stand idly by and allow it to happen. Then, without warning, he finds himself their Lora. Malos is violent and distant, Mikhail's unhelpful and still silent (hasn't started his dramatics yet) – so it's Jin they follow and look up to.

He panics and pushes them away. Akhos learns cruelty from Malos and Jin scrambles to regain their trust. He's not sure why he thinks he can lead them – he can’t even lead himself – but he wants to try. He tries to teach Patroka to cook. She laughs in his face the first time, the second she punches him. Jin feels lost.

“The Architect left no place in his design for us.” Akhos  observes one night. “We were never meant to survive.”

Jin's jawline tightens. He thinks of Lora – thinks of how he was supposed to forget her. Not revenge, not more violence to feed into the cycle, not the same mistakes again and again. Just grand strokes, just sparing everyone as efficiently as possible. Mercy.

He will bring the world mercy.

 

It’s only a matter of time. Mikhail laughs at them about it – at how they look at each other and move around each other. Jin's been waiting for Malos to make a move since they reconciled in the rain. He tells Malos as much one night.

The reaction is instantaneous: Malos pulls him close. His eyelids brush Jin's cheek, then they travel to the side and before he can react they’ve locked lips. Jin closes his eyes and lets the inevitable happen. It’s too easy to avoid, too natural to turn away from. Then there's a snarl, teeth and Jin grins as he deepens the kiss.

“Have you ever done this before?” The Aegis whispers.  _ With her,  _ he means,  _ am I special? Am I worse?  _ And then, soft, inevitable: “Is this the right thing to do?”

“Yes. And no one else.” It surprises him that he's lied, and it surprises him further that Malos seems to believe him.

It's only natural that they'd end up together, Jin tells himself, as he spitefully keeps the image of everyone Malos has killed in his mind’s eye. Damage seeks out damage. And they have a God to kill.

 

Their plan starts moving and it feels just like it did before everyone he'd ever loved died. It feels like they're going into battle and they'll all be gone and it'll just be him again, with fresh wounds and a frail human heart, trying against the odds to survive.

Jin holds Malos’s hand. “I wish we could stay like this forever.” He says it without thinking.

“Not when we're so close to our goal.” Malos sounds sharp. “Just a little longer.”

Jin sighs, doesn't reply. Starts to ready himself for grief.

 

Decades after losing Lora, Jin is faced by Amalthus behind her face. Amalthus raises Fan la Norne as a halfthing, as a fragment of what she was. A ghost resurrected to spite Lora and all she was, to embolden the Praetorium that killed her. He can read Amalthus in every inch of her, just like he sees him in Malos, just like he saw him in Minoth once, and that’ll always be something he wants to destroy. The cracked core crystal tells him the worst.

The force of his grief, his fury at this imposter, is enough to drive his sword through her chest before he even registers what he’s doing.

_ You are no slave. Be free now. _

And he remembers why he did it. Why he borrowed her heart and froze her solid instead of turning to light besides her. He didn’t want another life – not another driver, no more memories, not a cycle. He just wanted it to end, and maintaining himself was the closest he could get to that fatal inertia. He thought he would lie still, lie still, lie still and lean into his grief until his physicality was destroyed. Preventing his rebirth was his first sacrifice for her. He couldn’t bear it – to become another person and go through the process again, to love and lose and love and lose until, until what? Until he became a titan? And each time forgetting, each time making the same mistakes, each time unaware of his history,  _ or Lora _ ? No.

He looks at the fallen Fan la Norne and thinks: there we go. Now she doesn’t have to live either, or to be reborn endlessly as blades must. She’s out. Some of her crystal’s missing – he’ll get it later.

He keeps looking because she doesn’t fade. Sickness rises in him: is this something else Amalthus did to her? Made her like humans – subject to rot and decay and indignity after death? He keeps looking, furious, aching because it’s like looking at Lora, like he’s taken her heart again.

_ Imagine _ , he thinks,  _ imagine if that were me. If I hadn't eaten Lora, if my core crystal had been inevitably found by the Praetor and he’d resonated with me, cannibalized me.  _ He cannot think of anything worse. If only he'd been able to help Haze earlier.

 

Pyra looks like he feels. Jin wants to give her peace. He remembers when she was created – after Mythra did something too horrific to process, something Mikhail will never forgive her for regardless of intent. It’s not a position anyone should be in. And yet – she fights and bargains even alone in any meaningful sense with her back against the wall.  _ Just let me kill you,  _ he thinks,  _ it's what we both want. _

Watching Malos hurt her almost sets him back a couple of centuries. He remembers his awakening, his false promise to protect Lora. Pyra could use someone like that. It’s a shame her driver hadn’t been stronger, hadn't cared more, hadn’t noticed. Now she has to die alone. It's a waste, and it's a mercy.

This is what he wanted, so why does he feel so relieved when she escapes? It just means more chasing. More time with Torna before Malos cracks the world like an egg. Jin has never had the resolve of the others, now less than ever. Doubt consumes him. The only thing driving him forwards is personal loyalty.

 

When Lora's body is vaporized he feels nothing at all.

 

“I saw it when we were fighting. In your eyes. It was the look of someone who just wanted to die. Someone with no other way out.”

What's Jin supposed to say to that? How's he supposed to accept that this random boy, driver of the Aegis or no, understands him better than Torna, his family? That unlike Malos - brilliant, callous Malos – this Rex would actually try to help him? Jin closes his eyes and grips his sword tighter and starts to reconsider things.

 

“You promised we’d go together.” Malos tells him, full of accusation and hurt. And Jin wants to – wants to be anything but alone because he chose to love Malos because he thought he couldn't lose him – and yet-

Rex has awoken an understanding in him. Jin has been failed by many people – by Lora, first for awakening him and then for dying, by Mythra, who sought his support and used it to fell continents, by Malos, who told him this was the only way out. There were other ways to serve his people, other ways to punish the Architect.

Jin wants no part of this, in the end.

“I'll hold them off.” He offers. He can’t bear to tell Malos of his regret, his shame. Despite it all, Jin loves him. He loves steadily and loyally and far too much. Death doesn’t even put a dent in Jin's steadfast love.

“You'll catch me up, then.” Malos nods, once, and goes.

It's the last time Jin ever sees him.

 

When Jin finally finds out what the Praetorium was doing with all those core crystals, he barely stops himself from weeping. If Malos were here he would, because Malos could cover him and then he’d be allowed to mourn all the blades slain to give the Praetor, to give him what? Strength? He was the driver of an Aegis. Power? But he had everything – had his gold and white weaponized titan and had Jin's people wedged under his boot. He has control through might, faith and influence. He has all he could want, so why? Why the genocide, the cruelty?

There's no reason, Jin chides himself. There never is; doesn't need to be. But despite himself, he finds himself looking into Amathus's eyes and trying to understand what could make someone that broken, so absolutely shattered that their existence in a world threatened its security.

Amalthus, the man who scarred Malos. He has taken everything, Jin thinks, this natural disaster of a man, so destructive he should have his own category having inscribed his name in blood over centuries of history. He takes Patroka's core crystal, then Akhos's as well because nothing is enough for him. Jin might be lightspeed, but he's not fast enough to stop that.

Patroka. Akhos. Mikhail. The names of the fallen resonate inside his aching skull. There’s hardly anyone left to see his brave new world. Malos won't like that, he wanted witnesses. It's like Torna all over again. There will be no one left.

Jin finds his eyes resting on the last flesh eater in the room other than himself.

“It wasn’t a mistake, was it? Becoming the blade of someone you love? I did that too, once…” Jin looks at Nia, at Rex. He wishes he had longer to get to know them, that they had found him earlier. Oh, he can see it in Nia’s face, what he’d had for Lora. He won’t take it away from her. Couldn’t.

“Stop Malos.” He says. He means help Malos. He trusts Rex, this stranger, to help his closest friend, his sometimes-lover. “He’s still searching for his own identity.” Without Jin, Malos will be directionless and boundlessly destructive in his grief. He needs guidance. He also needs stopping, unless everything is to burn.

Jin steels himself and begins to attack Amathus again. For Mik, for Akhos, for Patroka. For Torna, a home lost.

“You should have died with Torna.” Amalthus tells him, wearing a suit made from the fresh corpses of Jin’s people. He's right. Jin aches and wishes and yearns for the golden country.

It’s taken him so long. Some things are right: he takes down Amalthus. The rest are wrong. Lora’s body’s been vaporized, but he always wanted her to be there. He had thoughts, ideas... maybe he’d return her heart – but none of them came to pass.

One thing went right, though – his core is obliterated, destroyed so utterly that nothing can be reconstructed from it. There will be no shadow of Jin, no stranger with his powers. When Jin dies, Jin dies.

There's so much he hasn't done. So many people he hasn't saved. He sees now, in his last moments, how painfully inert he has been, how he has spent his life chasing Lora's ghost and Malos's impossible conscience. Everyone he might apologise to is dead at his feet. Oh, he's tired. He hates fighting, why must he meet his end like this? It's a betrayal of himself, to fight. An unkindness. Akhos's words echo in his mind:

_ We were never meant to survive. _

It was wrong of him to survive Torna, to survive Hugo and Brighid and Aegeon and Milton and Lora and Addam and Minoth and Haze and Sever and Perdido and Cressidus and Obrona and Mikhail and Patroka and Akhos.

Lora's heart breaks apart in Jin's body, hitting the air as a weightless wave of shimmering crystal. 

**Author's Note:**

> was absolutely enchanted by torna, the salty suicidal crew who want to kill god who they hold responsible for their pain. had to write something about them. 
> 
> also interested in the idea of jin being pushed along towards the apocalypse by inertia rather than intent. imo he's motivated by love and grief rather than anything else - strong love that fixated on malos after lora died because he thought it would be safe to love him. i think jin's quite a weak character who follows rather than leads, and is very much a product of his environment. i don't think he succeeds in exerting control very well. i love him tho


End file.
